BF2S Forums Is our educational system outdated?

Well, you cant give every single child custom education designed to perfectly fit their educational needs, but you can create a system that relies more on actual intelligence rather than age.
even though the ones that are smarter and/or work harder get rewarded later on, that reward still feel very small and its something that will only happen later on (end of high school or uni).
they dont get the intellectual stimulation they require throughout their entire life (in the school system)

Yes it should be.
Often in class in elementary school I was bored shitless, I would play my gameboy almost every day.
Always did well, was the valedictorian in elementary school and got a 94% average and I never glimpsed at homework more than mandatory assignments.

But I don't know what to do about it at that age. The answer isn't simply "move the child ahead a year or two" or "Just give them more work" (which, sidenote, was done for me but the teacher assigned me more homework, didn't actually teach me anything new). Although it would have made school more challenging and I would have developed a much better work ethic, I would most likely be an outcast in every social situation imaginable.
It seems like a good idea to have intelligence based grades, but that means that the more intelligent younger kids would be stuck with the "dumber" if you will older kids. And not to be critical but I find its usually the lower performing children who are 90% of the time the bad eggs in the class, which makes it much more likely that they would drag down the younger kids, not build them up. Especially when the jump in maturity at elementary school ages is so drastic, where as later in life 1 or 2 years makes little to no difference.

I feel it should be reformed and I have been thinking about this for a while, but I don't see any practical way of doing so until one on one education becomes a viable possibility.

(Also wrong section?)

Nice video and all, but what he proposes would require a complete overhaul of society because everything is dependent on the current educational system. Besides that, I disagree with his statement that judging people individually is bad because there's always going to be someone in a group who's not contributing, thereby slowing down the others or getting a free ride.

Uzique wrote:

i got jumped 3 years in my first school because of performance but then had to do the final year of school 3 times over repeatedly because of the law/regulations. that's inefficiency for you.

Going to uni at 15 would've alienated you. I'm glad I didn't go at 16.

Last edited by Shocking (2011-08-03 14:44:07)

Didn't know there's age restrictions for jumping classes there as well, strange imo.

Kampframmer wrote:

Well, you cant give every single child custom education designed to perfectly fit their educational needs, but you can create a system that relies more on actual intelligence rather than age.
even though the ones that are smarter and/or work harder get rewarded later on, that reward still feel very small and its something that will only happen later on (end of high school or uni).
they dont get the intellectual stimulation they require throughout their entire life (in the school system)

Take it back to the pre-public school days where people were tutored individually (or in small groups). Voila! Problem solved.









Yes, it's completely unrealistic and socially stratifying but that is your alternative. Democratizing schooling made it mediocre, but more 'fair'. That was the tradeoff.

Last edited by Jay (2011-08-03 15:28:12)

Uzique wrote:

i much preferred it in the day when the sons of rich leisure could be packed off to oxford at age 14 to matriculate and then become polymaths and leading statesmen by 22. those were fairer, more enlightened times.

I never said it was fair. Democratization made it more 'fair' in that everyone has a relatively equal opportunity, it has just watered down the results tremendously due to the nature of democracy. Whether that tradeoff is worth it is a matter of opinion. I happen to lean towards stratification based on ability.

Last edited by Jay (2011-08-03 15:46:17)

Kampframmer wrote:

its the whole age/intellect ratio that bothers me.
Skipping classes is really difficult here.
here you have pre-school, elementary school, high school and then uni,college or do whatever you like.
Pre-school is done by most in 1 year, but they give certain children 2 years because theyre either young or not smart enough yet. After that point there is almost no way to get any form of intellectual lead on the rest no matter how smart you are.

Some skip 1 year in elementary, but thats only when theyre really smart and ahead and wen theyre older so the age difference wont be so big.
So someone like me (being born in june) would never be able to skip a class no matter how smart i would be because they would feel that the age difference would become to big.

Seems stupid.

A lot of that has to do with maturity though. A person may be more intelligent but be far behind in physical and emotional maturity. I remember there were a handful of people that had skipped a grade during my public school days, and they were all socially awkward and bullied because they were smaller.

This argument comes from Malcolm Gladwell's book "Outliers", yes?

I guess I agree with the concept in general but there is a lot more going on at school than just getting marks in maths etc. The factory line comparison is quite intriguing.

SEREMAKER wrote:

US school systems need to go on a year-around bases

45 days on 15 days off kinda deal but ultimately they should get no fucking time off but the weekend ........... I've got a fucking career, I don't get 3 weeks off for every 6 weeks

This would be a start.

You want 3 months of vacation a year, move to France.